Consolation
by Someryn
Summary: An alternate life where Bella has to find meaning again after Edward is killed. Bella/Jacob. Past Bella/Edward.


**CONSOLATION**

_An alternate life where Bella has to find meaning again after Edward is killed. Bella/Jacob. Past Bella/Edward._

* * *

Do we humans really have a soul?

I wasn't ever sure about the answer to that; I wasn't ever religious or spiritual or any of that crap until.

Until.

My life is divided into two parts. Before Edward and after him.

He was my life. We had a beginning, and an end, and then we took two different paths when we were supposed to always walk together. His dead ended, and mine kept going.

My soul was ripped out of my chest and I could almost _see_ it fly away, and everything hurt so bad that my vision went black at the edges and I don't even remember opening my mouth or taking a breath, but I was suddenly screaming so loud my ears rang for hours afterward.

And my Edward was gone forever.

* * *

Alice brought me home. By then I had crawled up inside myself, lock the doors and the windows because nobody's home, and there was nothing for me but pain in the outside world.

Charlie's face went white when he saw me, and I wondered how bad I looked to cause that sort of instant reaction. He reached over to take my arm from where Alice had wrapped it around her shoulder and pulled me onto the couch by himself.

"Tell me," he said to Alice.

She closed her eyes. "Edward is dead."

Everything is white and far-away after that.

* * *

I wake up in my bed. Jacob is sitting on the floor across from me, whittling something from a chunk of pine wood. He scrambles up when he sees me stir.

"Water?" he asks, and I shrug. I don't know; I can't feel anything.

I wander over to my window. It's almost dark outside, which means at least a day, a complete rotation of the earth, has passed without Edward Cullen in it. How can the whole world not be crying out its loss?

My chest suddenly hurts so bad that I bend over and bite my lip to keep from crying out.

Too hard, I realize, when Jake rushes over with a kleenex to dab away blood from my mouth. I grab the red spotted tissue from him and frown at it, tilting my head to try to understand.

How could blood not be enough to save Edward? Why can't he put himself back together and come back home to me?

* * *

I'm never alone.

I wondered at first if it was a coincidence,

Alice tells me later it was because she couldn't see my future anymore, and worried it was because I'd kill myself.

Whatever she said to Charlie, it convinced him. Suddenly there's a gun safe in his bedroom, the scissors are gone from the bathroom drawer (the only place I am ever by myself, now), and either Charlie or Jake is nearby at all times.

Of course, I could have found a way around those barriers, but Edward's last words to me were a plea not to follow him.

So no matter how much I feel like a living corpse, I will honor his last request.

* * *

The Cullens come to tell me goodbye. They are splitting up for a while, pairing off to grieve. The story is that Carlisle has decided to volunteer in Zimbabwe to take his mind off of losing Edward, and Esme and the "kids" are going with him.

It's hardest to say goodbye to Alice. "I'll come back," she whispers into my hair when we hug. "We both need some time, though, okay?"

I shrug. I don't know what I need, besides Edward back in my arms, but I know time's not going to cut it.

* * *

My mom pulls up in a rental car in front of Charlie's house a few weeks later, announcing that she booked us in at an extended stay hotel in Olympia to give me some time away from Forks. I just want to lie in bed and drown in my tears, but it's important to her to be the one helping me for once.

Selfish, Bella, it's not all about you.

She told me to pack some clothes, but I was overcome with apathy just considering that, so I didn't. She doesn't say a word, just comes back out with a backpack overflowing with my jeans and t-shirts.

The hotel is nicer than I thought it would be, two bedrooms with a shared bathroom. It's almost like living with Charlie.

She takes me to the used bookstore and buys me every classic she can find. Then she grabs two beach towels, and we go to sit by the lake. She hands me _Jane Eyre_ and pulls out a mystery novel for herself.

These become our days. We sit by the lake or in the hotel room, reading or watching movies or writing (me) or calling Phil (her). She talks a lot, but she also doesn't have any problem carrying the conversation by herself, so I mostly just shake my head or nod when prompted.

Charlie drives up that Saturday with two fishing poles in hand and drags me out to the lake with him before sunrise. It's quiet and glass-still on the morning water, and I slowly fall into the calm and allow myself not to think about Edward for a while.

It's not quite peaceful, but it's the closest I've felt in weeks.

* * *

Two weeks after we've come here, Renee looks up at me from where we are gathering our towels by the hotel's pool. "Do I need to get us another week?" she asks me uncertainly.

I think about it. My mind is quieter, these days. I'm not panicky and too tight in my own skin, anymore, and I can't hide away forever. And Renee misses Phil.

"Let's go home, Mom," I say.

When we get to Forks, I suddenly realize that I can't walk back through the door to Charlie's house right now. It feels too much like trying to press a reset button, and I think I might die when Edward doesn't come into my bedroom tonight.

She finally gives in and drops me off at La Push, instead. I stumble to the Blacks' front door and wave goodbye to my mom without turning around. Billy's still up watching the late news, and he takes one look at me and points wordlessly down the hallway toward Jake's room.

My best friend is asleep with headphones on, and I don't really think; I just drop my backpack on the floor and fall into him. He grunts awake, and his arms come up to wrap around me.

Somehow he knows not to say anything, just clutches me to his broad chest. He's hot and woodsy and every molecule in him vibrates with aliveness, and he is the opposite in every way of what I've lost (he is exactly what I need).

My body wants to cry again, but I'm so tired of crying. So I lie there shaking, holding back sobs and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling in Jake's room until his steady heartbeat finally lulls me to sleep.

* * *

When I wake, Jake's curled protectively around me, like he wants to shield me with his body in case the ceiling caves in.

He wakes up not long after and reaches out a warm hand to brush my sleep-tangled hair out of my eyes. "Come on, I'll make you some breakfast."

I follow him into the kitchen and sit at the weathered dining table and stare at the wood grain until Jake comes back with plates of eggs and bacon.

"You've lost weight again," he informs me accusingly, setting down a plate piled almost as high as his in front of me. I'll be lucky to finish half of it.

I sigh and reach for a fork.

We walk outside after we finish breakfast. It's just finished drizzling, and the trees are dark with dampness, leaves and grass glittering with dew.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asks finally.

My lip trembles, but I have no more tears. "Just be you, Jake. That's all I need."

He wraps his arm around my shoulders, and we walk toward the beach. The coastline is jagged and sharp, the waves rough, but it looks beautiful to me.

The whole world is so fucking beautiful, and Edward will never get to see it again.

I don't realize I've fallen to my knees until Jake is crouching down beside me, and my hands are being cut on the tiny, sharp rocks on the ground as I clench my fists into the gravel.

I cry as he carefully pulls the shards out. Not because it hurts, but because my life is back to my blood not meaning anything special at all.

It's just blood to people who aren't Edward and aren't vampires.

It's just blood, and it's just me, now. Alone, forever.

* * *

I end up getting incompletes for most of the classes in the second half of my senior year, so I can't walk across the stage with my graduating class. Charlie seemed to think I would be devastated, and he was ready to go roaring into the principal's office, guns a-blazing, to demand they let me walk and finish my classes over the summer.

I refuse to step foot inside Forks High again, though. My high school life in Forks was always about Edward, and he haunts me enough without having to walk those hallways again where I first met him. There is only so much pain I can take before my sanity will shatter into pieces around me.

Billy inquires at the reservation's high school and ends up getting me admitted with a distance learning arrangement, provided I complete the Quileute courses, too.

I suppose that finishing up the high school classes will give me something to do, and Charlie and Jake both really seem to care that I graduate, so I nod and sign my name to the enrollment form.

And the months bleed into summer and then autumn, and my eighteenth birthday approaches. I very carefully don't think about what would have happened by now, what I should have been by now. The future that was stolen from me.

How did eternity together turn into one lifetime alone?

* * *

Jake asks me what I want to do for my birthday. I tried telling him I just wanted to forget it this year (and every year from now on, every year I get older than Edward and leave him behind forever, permanently seventeen and permanently dead.) Jake told me I could come quietly or he would be carrying me out of the house.

He rings the doorbell that afternoon, which is unusual for him, but when I open the door, it's Alice who is staring back at me instead, an uncertain smile on her perfect porcelain face.

"Jacob found me," she says as I gape at her. "I'm sorry, Bella, I didn't mean to miss your birthday, but time gets away from us when we don't keep track..."

"I get it," I reassure her automatically, trying to figure out if the pain her presence brings me overrules how good it feels to see her again.

She grabs my hand in her icy grip. I shiver. I'm not used to vampires touching me, anymore.

"I have been keeping an eye on you, Bella," she says, as we walk over to the couch. "I don't see you hurting yourself anymore, but your future's also pretty foggy these days. I guess from hanging out all the time with _him_." She talks about Jake with a grimace.

I fight down a burst of anger. "He's my _best friend_, Alice. He's been there for me since-" my voice breaks. "Since Edward."

"And I haven't," she sighs sadly. I can't deny that. "Bella, honey," she says. "I wasn't just trying to make excuses when I said I'd lost track of time. Change is slower for us. I'll need years to get over Edward. Decades, probably. But that's okay. I've got all the time in the world." Her eyes are kind. "But you don't."

Suddenly heavy, hot tears are pouring down my face like rain. "Tell me how to turn it off, then, Alice!" I shriek. "Tell me how to stop feeling like this!"

Her eyes are gentle and knowing, which makes it worse. "Adapting is one of the things humans do best... so much better than vampires do. Falling and getting back up, and moving on. Accepting the shitty things that happen in exchange for the slices of good that make it all worthwhile."

I'm too busy gasping for air to respond, and for a time she just strokes my back soothingly.

"Edward wouldn't have been able to move on if you had died. That's just the truth. But you can, Bella, and you _will_ be happy again." She touches her temple. "I've seen it."

Alice doesn't stay much longer; she says she can hear Jacob prowling restlessly in wolf form around my house. My crying has obviously upset him.

"I still need time," she whispers to me when she finally stands up to go. "But if you ever need me, get away from the wolves and make a ridiculous decision. I'll be there within a day. I love you."

We share a long, tight hug, and then she is a blur and gone.

* * *

Jake comes in a few minutes later. I'm red-eyed and tired, but I have to get out of the house, so he leads me into the woods, on a gentle, well-worn path he knows.

"I want to talk about Edward," I tell him when we've walked in silence for a few minutes.

He twitches in surprise. "Okay," he says. "I'm always listening, Bells, you know that."

So I launch into the details I haven't let myself dwell on during these long, lonely months from hell. Every single thing I loved about Edward, how he laughed, how he loved, how he learned.

Then my voice hardens, and I reluctantly bring up the few things that were less than ideal about Edward. It's like I'm a portrait painter, and I have this one chance to paint a perfectly accurate picture of the man I loved and lost.

He didn't always count my opinions as highly as my own. He planned _around_ me, sometimes. Jake knows this one.

He would cheerfully lie, steal, kill, do anything if he thought it would help me.

He would damn the entire world to save me, and not even need to think twice. That one had always scared the shit out of me.

My voice is shaky and hoarse when I'm done, but I haven't cried. Jake takes me hand and tugs me over to a huge stump that we both fit on.

"You know I'm not the most unbiased person, where he's concerned," he says when my heartbeat has slowed again. "But, I'll tell you, with complete honesty, that if he hadn't been a vampire and hadn't been your boyfriend, I think I would have admired him. A lot. As it is, I...respect him, and I'm eternally grateful to him, for thinking of your well-being with his last thoughts. If anyone ever deserved their happy ending, it was the two of you." His voice shakes a little. "And I'm sorry you didn't get it."

I lean my head into his shoulder, and his heavy arm wraps around my waist with length to spare, and we just sit for a while, listening to the sounds of the living forest.

* * *

Sometimes, when I awake in the middle of the night with racing fears and choking grief that threatens to overcome my self-control, I wonder if Edward loved my humanity more than he loved me.

He certainly thought it was something amazing, something worth fighting for.

But if he thought it was so great, he had to have also known that humans can't stop the wheel of their lives. I can't be fixated on my past forever.

Without my consent, Edward has slipped away from my present and my future, and into my past, like he's like a book I've finished and placed on an out-of-reach shelf.

Sometimes I hate myself for moving forward with my life. If I really loved him, I wouldn't be able to do that. Would I?

In a spectacular moment of weakness, I'd asked Charlie, who even in his better moments had never been one of Edward's biggest fans.

"Things will come and go in your life, Bells," he'd said. "That's how life works. And people die on you, way too soon, all the time. Your Grandpa Swan was like that. Sixty-four and as healthy as a horse...till the day he never woke up. You'll always love the people you've lost, but you won't always grieve for them."

Then he'd cleared his throat awkwardly. "At least, that's the way your old man sees it. You grieve however you need to, baby. But don't get stuck in the despair. That's the only way to do it wrong. No matter how long it takes, eventually, you've got to start moving forward again."

From where I stand, that doesn't seem too likely, though.

* * *

My life as I thought I knew it is torn to shreds and re-formed again one evening in October, almost ten months after I'd lost the other half of my soul.

I'm sitting with Jake in his bedroom, struggling to pay attention as he tries to teach me calculus. Or, at least, enough of it so I can pass my upcoming mid-term for my distance learning class.

"Jake, c'mon, let me give up. At least for tonight." I'm frustrated and tired, and I feel like an idiot because I keep forgetting how limits work.

He snorted. "Bells, babe, I've never given up on you yet. I'm not about to let fucking calculus defeat my perfect record."

I groaned and laid my head on his shoulder. "Yeah, I know, Jake, it's why I love you so much."

Up to that point, this was a pretty typical day in my post-Edward life.

That is, until Jake turned to look down at me, and placed one calloused hand on my cheek.

I looked up at him, into the handsome face and kind eyes I'd seen almost every day for months, and for the first time, I saw the possibility of something more.

No one could ever read me like he could, and he saw my response in my eyes and raised one eyebrow.

"One day," I whispered up to him, amazed at the words that were coming out of my mouth. "But not yet."

He understood perfectly, and the spark of joy in his eyes was hard to ignore. He kissed me on the forehead and picked up his textbook again. "I can wait," he said calmly, and turned to the start of the chapter to try teaching me again.

* * *

He wasn't kidding. For the next eight months, there are no more...moments, and Jake is the same friend I've always had. Quiet when I need him to be, funny and cheerful and talkative when that's what I need.

A year passes, and I can start to stand being in other people's company besides Charlie's and Jake's. I go to the movies with Quil and Embry and Jake, and Angela picks me up while she's in town from Washington State one weekend to go shopping. Jake even takes me to one of the tribal meetings that are supposed to be strictly closed to outsiders, but none of the tribe really seems to object to me being there. "You're part of us, girl," Billy had told me simply.

In a way, I've found a new family and new purpose. It's not the same, but then, nothing ever will be again. There's no point in comparing the two.

In my own way, though, my limit starts approaching happiness again.

* * *

One year, seven months and nineteen days.

Is that too short of a time to move on? Did that mean I didn't really love Edward after all?

But I haven't moved _past _Edward. I'm pretty sure that's not possible. He's a part of me now, in my dreams, in my soul, in the air I breathe.

One year, seven months and nineteen days after I lost Edward forever, I kiss Jacob Black.

We're in the cab of my pickup truck, beside the country road where Jacob told me to pull off because he saw wild blackberries. He knows how much I love berries, and he gets his arms all scratched up and bloody bringing me huge handfuls just to see me smile.

I realize in that moment every single thing he's done for me, since it all began.

And the only way I can think of to thank him involves my mouth on his in the warm summer rain.

* * *

Dating Jacob is an awful lot like being best friends with him, except his skin is electric sparks on mine now, and I can never quite seem to touch him enough.

Billy gives us aggrieved glares whenever I come over to the house. "The walls are _paper thin_," he says when Jake and I head toward the bedroom. "I beg you, spare your old man any indignity."

And of course, I flush tomato red and Jake leans over to whisper in my hair, "Don't worry, we'll keep you quiet," and cackles when I turn even redder.

Charlie couldn't be happier, of course. He calls Jacob "son", and tells him he's welcome at the house anytime.

Jake just grins and squeezes me into a side hug. I realize that I'm smiling, too.

* * *

We're sitting in the living room at my house doing our homework when Jake asks me out of nowhere where I want to go to college. I look up at him in horror. He's already told me that he plans to open a German auto repair shop, but he doesn't need a college education for that.

Does he _want_ me to go away?

"Of course not," he says, shocked, when I finally mumble my fears into his chest. "But I can be your car-mechanic werewolf boyfriend anywhere, can't I?"

"I suppose," I agree, mollified.

He sweeps me up into a kiss that curls my toes and leaves me breathless with desire for him. "I will be here by your side until you tell me not to be," he tells me, looking into my eyes. "I will never leave you."

I believe him.

* * *

U-W accepts me that spring, much to my surprise, and I matriculate as a history major. It's the only subject I've ever liked in school. I'm hoping a career path I could like will reveal itself to me over the next four years. But for now, I enroll in 18th Century European History, Feudal Japan, and Western American Indian studies, for Jacob's sake.

Seattle's nice, I guess. It's big and busy and full of its own self-importance. I miss home, though. (When did dreary Washington become my home?)

I live in a tiny dorm room in one of UW's older buildings. The upside is that single rooming is allowed, so I gladly paid the slight premium for the privacy. I don't have the same social needs that most women have. I have Jake, and Renee and Charlie, and Angela when I need girl time. It is enough.

Jake comes to see me almost every day. He's found a cheap room at a five bedroom house rented out to mostly Husky students and gets hired on as an apprentice to a local VW mechanic.

When I don't have class too early the next morning, Jake stays the night, and we take advantage of the privacy we've never had before to explore each other's bodies. It's unbelievable, sometimes tender and slow, sometimes fast and hot and the next moment can't come soon enough.

I'm the happiest I'd been since losing Edward, but I can't help questioning it, prodding at my hard-earned contentment. I should have been exploring the city, making new friends, right? Lots of girls probably would have broken up with their high school boyfriends, try dating some college guys.

"You're an old soul, sweetie," my mom would remind me when I called her, stressed out over both my classes and my life decisions.

"I just don't want the same things other girls do," I'd tell her. I am not an impulsive person. I plan, I consider all consequences, and then I act, and for as much as I was able, my life has been carefully and conscientiously planned out.

Until the morning in the second semester of my freshman year, when I completed my normal morning routine, finishing up with taking my next birth control pill, and realized that the placebos had been a week ago and I had never gotten my period.

Later, Jacob held me as we stared in shock at my positive pregnancy test.

I was twenty years old.

* * *

It was with a surprising amount of relief that Jake and I returned to Forks and La Push. I still got a half tuition refund for withdrawing from my classes for the semester, so there was still money in my savings account to help pay for everything we would need for the baby.

Jake had asked me, with trepidation, if I was sure I wanted to keep it.

"I know what I want," I'd told him. "I wanted to have a family with you one day anyway. It seems wrong to abort this one because his timing isn't great."

His eyes went wide. "You did?" he said.

I had laughed in disbelief that he could doubt that. "Jake, I love you. There will never be anyone else but you."

With trembling fingers, he'd reached into his pocket. "I'm sorry this isn't more romantic, and that the order's all wrong," he muttered.

Almost in slow motion, I watched as he knelt down in my dad's living room and held up a beautiful silver and turquoise ring to me. "My mother's," he told the floor. Then he looked up at me with his beautiful, shining dark eyes. "Isabella Swan, I love you with all my heart. Please say you'll marry me."

"Jake, of course, yes," I managed to get through my numb lips.

He swept into the air as I squealed and wrapped my arms and legs tight around him, and pulled his lips down to me.

And the part of me that was Edward knew he was happy for me.

* * *

Sarah Elizabeth Black was born a week early (but not a minute too soon for her mother; I was even less graceful than usual during my pregnancy). I named her after Jacob's mother, and Edward's. It seemed fitting.

Renee and Jake were at my bedside, and Charlie and Billy waited anxiously outside the delivery room for their first grandchild to be born.

The doctors told me it was a perfect pregnancy, though what right they had to say that when I couldn't keep breakfast down for three months, I don't know. All I really cared about was getting a perfect baby at the end of it, though.

And she was perfect.

I burst into tears when the doctor placed her in my arms, and Jacob was so dizzy he had to sit down.

Almost everyone I loved was here.

Almost.

* * *

Sarah was only a few weeks old when I drove up to Olympia with her. I cuddled with her on a bench in a wooded, secluded area of a beautiful park there, and then I thought very hard about the decision I'd made to streak through this park tomorrow.

Then I waited.

It took less than an hour for Alice to come blurring up to me. She must not have been more than a state away.

The frantic words that rushed out of her mouth were almost immediately swallowed back as she went bug-eyed at the sight of Sarah. I wish I'd brought a camera.

"But Bella, it hasn't been that long, has it?" I could see her counting days in her head, examining my face.

"I turn 21 next month," I told her. Almost three years since I've last seen her. "Apparently werewolf sperm are super swimmers." I stood and held my sleeping infant out to her as proof of this fact.

Alice took her with hands suddenly graceful and delicate enough to hold fine china and looked down at my daughter reverently. "I told you you'd be happy again," she said. "But I never saw _her_. You've been out of my visions' reach pretty much ever since I last saw you."

Abruptly, she handed Sarah back to me. "I'll be back," she said. "I'll go to your dad's house and wait for you there. But first-" Her grin was fierce and delighted. "I have to find _Rosalie_."

* * *

My wedding was beautiful. Of course it was; Alice arranged most of it, with Renee's help.

We held it on one of the rare, brief stretches of beautiful coastline in Washington, about forty miles south of La Push, outside of Quileute territory so that we wouldn't be breaking any treaties. It was an overcast but bright day, and I supposed that was the best I could ask for from the Pacific Northwest weather.

I was wearing a slightly old-fashioned styled gown that Alice had designed, based off photos Jacob had given her of his mother in her dress. Billy, my dear, gruff father-in-law, actually teared up when he saw me in it, which meant Alice had done it right.

It was a small wedding, though Jake and Billy had invited their closest friends from the reservation. Renee and Phil and Charlie were there, too, of course, and Angela and Ben, my only friends from high school that I really cared about.

And every single one of the Cullens had come to see me married.

Esme and Carlisle beamed at me from their seats near the front with their arms around each other, though I knew they were still grieving for Edward in their hearts. Jasper stood nearby, his eyes on Alice, who was flitting around from person to person to make sure everything was perfect before the ceremony started. Emmet stood at the back with Rosalie, who was holding my bouncy six-month-old in her gentle but iron arms.

I smiled as I always did when I saw my daughter in Rosalie's care. Everyone close to me knew that Rosalie was Sarah's keeper, and that any attempts to take her would be subject to Rose's approval. And Rose has some very strict ideas about what appropriate measures are to keep my daughter safe.

Like having vampire bodyguards on playdates. I wish I was kidding.

Suddenly, Alice hissed something to Rose, and she and Emmet started walking to the folding chairs and took their seats in the back row.

I swallowed. That meant it was almost time.

Everyone seated went still and expectant, and it felt like I had barely blinked before Alice was walking down the aisle, beaming, with Quil and Embry on each arm.

Then my dad was at my side, reaching out to tuck my hand in his elbow. "Ready?" he mouthed. I took a deep breath.

The pianist began playing, and Charlie started walking, tugging me gently along with him. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it thudding throughout my body, but I kept my eyes on Jake, at the end of long walk down the grass, so I wouldn't faint or trip. Or both.

It wasn't hard to concentrate on Jake. My whole life revolved around him and Sarah now. We were in our own personal orbit around each other.

Then my dad was handing me off, misty-eyed, and I looked up into the eyes of my best friend, my lover, and my soon-to-be husband.

Just a few years ago I could have never envisioned a future and a child with my childhood friend Jacob Black, but I had no regrets.

I was finally happy again.

* * *

We bought a small house near the reservation and moved in right after the wedding. The house was close to Billy without being on Quileute land, so the Cullens could visit, and less than five miles from Charlie's house.

Esme and Carlisle quietly paid off the mortgage as a wedding gift for me once they found out where we were living, and wouldn't even consider letting us pay them back.

Rosalie and Alice came over almost every day, and Jacob said jokingly that his nose was numbed to their smell, now. We took Sarah to the zoo and the children's museum and the park to feed the ducks, or Rosalie would stay behind with Sarah while Alice and I went out for manicures or movies.

I made dinner in the evenings for the three of us when Jake got home from the auto shop, and he kissed me and kissed Sarah and then kissed me again.

Thus the years passed peacefully. I loved Jake and Sarah, and I loved our life together.

* * *

In my weaker moments I sometimes worried that Jake would imprint on someone and leave me behind forever. I didn't know if I would be able to handle losing the love of my life twice.

"Bells," Jake said, gripping my shoulders and looking down at me with fond exasperation. "That's not going to happen."

"You can't make me that prom-"

"And even if it did-" he interrupted. "I would still love you. I'll _always_ love you. And Sarah." He nodded to our four-year-old daughter, who was blissfully building a castle out of legos on the floor at our feet. "And I'd see that you two were taken care of."

As still happened sometimes, a bolt of guilt shot through me as I thought about what I might be keeping Jake from. He didn't go visit any of the other Quileute camps with his friends like he used to, instead choosing to spend any free time he had with Sarah and me. There might be the perfect girl for him at one of them, and he had just never locked eyes with her.

"Bells, c'mon, I know what you're thinking." I met his eyes reluctantly. "I told you, I never _wanted_ to imprint. It takes away your choices. It forces you to immediately love someone you've never even seen before. You can't even see her flaws. Your entire existence is to please her. It's not real love; it's obsession." He frowned. "'Sides, I've told you, I've got the strangest feeling that whoever I would've imprinted on doesn't exist. Like, the circumstances for me to meet her were never met. So you've got nothing to worry about."

I tucked my head into his shoulder, reassured. "You love me, even with all my flaws, Jake?"

He grinned. "Just like you love despite mine, sweetheart. Always and forever, right?"

"Yep," I said, standing up on tiptoes to kiss him. "Forever and ever."

I'm 24 years old, and I've existed without Edward Cullen in my life for seven years now. I'm getting better at it.

* * *

I'm 29 and rocking my eighteen-month-old daughter Allison Rose as she greedily sucks on her pre-nap time bottle. When she finishes, I start to stand to carry her to her crib, but Rosalie is already at my side, reaching out for her to let Ally fall asleep in her arms.

"She'll get spoiled," I tell Rosalie half-heartedly, though I suspect it's too late for that, and go back to my textbook on Central American history. I'm only nine credit hours away from my bachelors degree in history, and I intend to graduate by next summer, despite being a mother to two kids under ten. (There are many advantages to having a friend who will never, ever get tired of helping you raise your children.)

I've only made it through a couple pages, though, when I hear Sarah's cheerful chattering as Alice leads her inside.

"I got two goals in soccer at recess, Mama," she tells me, dropping her backpack on the floor (which Alice catches before it hits the ground) and walking over so I can kiss her forehead. "I beat the _boys._"

"That's great, sweetheart," I tell her. "How about the rest of the day?"

She wrinkles her nose at me. "Rest of the day was _boring_. Miss Betty makes me be quiet."

I laugh. Sarah definitely takes after her father, in both her love for the outdoors and her love of talking. I send her off to wash her hands before she eats the elaborate snack that Rosalie has prepared for her today. I swear, people must wonder if I'm Sarah's mom, or if Rosalie is. Or even Alice, really.

Alice comes over to put a cool hand on my cheek. "Everything okay?" she asks. She and Rosalie have been over even more often than usual over the past week, since Jake is gone with the pack to hunt down a rogue vampire that crossed over into Quileute territory a month ago.

I miss him terribly. He's my everything, my other half, and I'm not sure there's enough of me left to go on if I lost him.

"I was just thinking morbid thoughts," I say, trying to smile, but it comes out lopsided. "If anything happens to me and Jake, you'll be there for Sarah and Ally, right?"

Rose wipes her hands on a dishtowel and comes back into the living room. "Forever," she says, and Alice nods firmly. "And for _their_ children and their children's children, as long as we live."

My eyes are watery. Though I wouldn't trade my girls or my husband for anything, there's no denying that this isn't the life I would have wished for when I was seventeen, and I'll never be part of the Cullen family forever like I used to dream about. But my children and grandchildren will always be part of their lives.

And that's something.

* * *

A week later, Jake is back home, swinging Sarah around and then squeezing Ally tight, before he bounds back over to me, still like a puppy as a grown man.

"I missed you," he says, kissing me soundly, which makes Sarah run shrieking from the room.

"You, too," I say in a voice gone husky with desire and joy at seeing him again, and I hand Ally off to Rosalie and take Jake's hand in mine.

Later, we're lying on top of the covers and staring into each other's eyes. "Are you happy, love?" he asks me, tenderly tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "Truly?"

I close my eyes and try to think how I can encompass my answer. Twelve years later, and Edward is still inside me, and I can feel his soul whenever I look at Alice or Rosalie, whenever I take the girls to play in "our" clearing, whenever my heart swells with love for Jake and Sarah and Ally.

Not many people in this world will ever know love like I loved Edward Cullen, and it would have been greedy to ever expect to experience that feeling again. But for reasons I don't understand but know I don't deserve, I was blessed with the chance to love and be loved once more.

I can feel Edward's smiling for me as I lean over and kiss my beloved husband on the lips.

"I am, Jake. I'm truly and radiantly happy with you."

He grins and rolls me on top of him again.

Our third child, Charles Edward, is born precisely nine months later.

* * *

**EPILOGUE**

I'm 73 and I am dying. Stupid, stupid cancer is robbing me of days with my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I'm in hospice care in the same modest home I've lived in since Jake and I got married over half a century ago. Sarah, Ally and Charlie, along with Sarah's oldest, Michelle, take turns at my bedside.

I try to tell them to go live their lives, not to waste their time watching me die, but they don't budge. "This is _exactly_ where we need to be, Mom," my Ally tells me firmly, and that's the end of that. All three of my children have inherited my legendary stubbornness.

As many people are at the end of their lives, I'm plagued by wondering what happens next. Is it a quiet fall into the dark, or is there something waiting for me on the other side?

The belief system I am most familiar with, of course, are those I know from my PhD studies in American Indian anthropology. Spiritual beliefs varied by tribe, but most practiced customs designed to encourage the deceased soul to continue on to the afterlife, not to stay and linger on the mortal plane that was no longer their home.

They wouldn't need to worry about me trying to stay behind.

My Jacob left this earth seven years ago, now, and my heart still aches for him. 66 and a massive, sudden heart attack took him days before Ally's first grandchild, Jacob Mathis, was born; the most pointless, unnecessary waste of a good man that I've ever heard of.

I had to teach myself to live again without him, using the lessons he taught me when I lost Edward. Funny how it was always the weak link, the un-supernatural and un-special one, who kept surviving, left behind to try to put the shards of my life back together.

In some ways, it's a relief to finally be leaving this world behind.

Alice offered, tentatively, to change me when I got the diagnosis three years ago. I told her quite politely that pigs would fly in a frozen hell before that happened. I am a human, and I will die a human.

I, too, am where I need to be.

My morphine drip leaves me dulled and drifting most of the time, and my daytime nurse Tallulah told me that it could be any day, now. But I know it won't be, because I can't go, not yet.

Not everyone is here, yet.

Time spreads apart and springs back together, and my grandchildren and my grandchildren's children are in my bedroom. They come in to kiss my hollow cheeks and squeeze my paper-thin hands and tell me they love me. It takes all my energy just to open my eyes and smile, now, and I wish I could hug them tightly and tell them that I love them, too, with every fiber of my soul.

"They know it, Mom," Charlie says quietly from his seat on the armchair next to my bed.

He's always read me best. My baby, my only boy, is 42 now, and still handsome, and sometimes I can see traces of his namesake Edward in him, though of course that's ridiculous.

"They know how much you love them. We all do. Please don't hold on for us; we know you're in pain. You can go on."

I haven't spoken in days...or is it weeks? "Not...yet..." I say in a bone rattle voice.

Suddenly (or maybe it isn't suddenly; maybe it's hours or days later), I open my eyes and they are _here_. My other family, my _Cullens _have come to be with me, here at the end of all things.

Alice and Rosalie are holding my hands on either side of me, still looking as radiant and young as they did the day I met them when I was seventeen. Emmet and Jasper stand beside them, and walking through the door are Carlisle and Esme, who have been working deep in sub-Saharan Africa and whom I haven't seen in over a decade.

My vampire family brushes shoulders with my children and my first granddaughter, and everyone is smiling down at me with so much love in their eyes.

"I've found them, Bella," Alice says. "We're all here, now."

Her words echo into a white light that overwhelms my senses. "Oh, Alice!" I cry as I finally leave my broken body behind. _He did have one, after all._

"They're both here! Edward and Jake!"

_**FIN**_

* * *

Author's Note

_Believe it or not, this story came about as a result of my fascination with NDEs and deathbed experiences. Everything about Bella's experience in the epilogue is typical of terminally ill patients: an awareness of when they will die, a sense of peace about their deaths, the desire to wait until certain family or friends are present or certain things are done before passing on, seeing deceased loved ones, and verbalizing their experience of "the other side"._

_The story developed backwards from there. :) _

_Thank you for reading._


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